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walk to Carroll Gardens
Saturday, November 10 2001
The big thing that was supposed to happen today was a twilight walk to Carroll Gardens, another classy Brooklyn neighborhood to the west. There, Gretchen had made a reservation at a tiny restaurant called The Grocery.
It was about 5pm when we set out. Most natural light is gone by 5pm these days. New York City is as far east as I've ever lived in a timezone, and I'm not used to dark descending so early at this time of the year. We headed south down President Street and eventually cut over to Union Street, stopping along the way for emergency pain relievers because sudden Gretchen's legs began to hurt.
Heading westward meant heading downhill into progressively less-gentrified neighborhoods on decreasing avenue numbers. 4th Avenue is much busier than avenues to its east and marks the functional western boundary of Park Slope. It's at the bottom of the slope and beyond it the mixed residential neighborhoods give way to a seedy lowland of small ironworks and warehouses. Beyond Nevins Street, the lowlands hit absolute bottom and there's a canal crossed every few streets by draw bridges. This is the Gowanus Canal, and it doesn't look like its suitable for much more than the disposal of dead bodies. We sat for a time on the steps of a drawbridge control facility waiting for Gretchen's legs to recover from whatever was ailing them.
Carroll Gardens and adjacent Cobble Hill are rapidly-gentrifying neighborhoods set on a hill rising from the west bank of the Gowanus Canal. The streets seemed to have much of the prosperous vibrance of Park Slope, though the people seemed to be more uniform in their lily (though often ethnic) whiteness.
We ducked into a jam-crammed discount store that was heavily promoting a 50% off sale on all Halloween items. Though there were plenty of items worthy of comment, we could find nothing we were interested in buying. However, I did briefly consider buying a wallet to replace the one I've been using since 1993 or 1994 (bought for me by my then-girlfriend Leslie Montalto).
We still had time to kill before our reservation at The Grocery, so we went into a hip little corner bar and ordered drinks and sat around talking about things related to marriage and long-term commitment. At some point we experienced something of a misunderstanding and, to make a long story short, our reservation at The Grocery had to be cancelled and we walked our separate ways home. I stopped at the Big Pizza Café on Seventh Avenue and had a chicken roll for dinner. Back at the brownstone, I was sort of stressed out so I fixed myself a drink.
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